Travel Tips: Fuel Surcharges

One of the biggest costs any airline has is fuel, and when the price of oil rises, as it has been doing over the past few years, the major scheduled airlines such as British Airways and Air France/KLM have passed on these higher costs to their passengers in the form of a surcharge. Those low-cost pioneers - easyJet and Ryanair - do not impose fuel surcharges however.

Surcharges are one of those charges that pop up towards the end of the booking process. They are there with the taxes, air passenger duty and the other charges that add to the headline cost of an air ticket.

Below is a sample of the surcharges charged by several of the major airlines.

Note: it’s important to remember that most of the fuel surcharges are “per sector” so if one was travelling to Singapore on Lufthansa via Frankfurt, the cost would be £8.50 (for the short hop to Frankfurt) + £44 (for the long-haul journey from Frankfurt to Singapore).